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Hello, friends.
Welcome to episode 244 of the No Cliff podcast.
It's a crew cast.
The whole crew is here.
The J-dogs are back.
Oh, my Lord.
Wow, it's all happening.
Frank Howley, what's your favorite dog?
The Shiba Inu.
Good pick.
Classic pick.
We have one that lives on the street.
I've seen it chase my goats.
That was pretty dope.
Next time it happens, I should call you around.
You should come over.
It's a good time.
Jesse Grasher, what's your favorite farmyard animal?
Farmyard animal?
I love me a good cow.
Highland especially.
The ones with the long coats.
Very beautiful creatures.
I want to hug one fuzzy boys.
Is that why you like that?
Uh, what was that game?
Again, we did the indie rack on hurdling.
Yeah, i guess that.
Yeah, i hadn't thought about it, but i did feel uh quite close to them, even though i purposefully killed one for fun.
You don't have any pets, do you?
Yeah, i have a dog.
Yeah, we got a dog.
You have a dog called what winston.
I did not know you had a dog called winston.
I feel like i've said that a couple.
Did you guys know he had a dog called winston?
I feel like, now that you say it, I feel like I knew it.
But that could just be me giving myself too much credit.
It's all right.
What type of dog is it?
It's a gold doodle.
We got to see pictures of it.
I want to see pictures.
Yeah, sure.
I think I've posted a dog on a doodle.
Yeah, I've seen one.
You've seen one.
You've seen them all.
They're pretty similar.
Winston's eight years old.
Eight years old.
It's an old boy.
He's a good boy, though.
I have a 17 year old cat.
Don't be telling me about old boys.
Okay.
All right.
It's got no competition.
It's got everything is competition.
Jesse.
Okay.
Haven't you seen YouTube?
It's all a competition.
Everyone's views are going down at the same time.
It's all happening.
YouTube apocalypse is happening.
Jeremy, what's the worst... What would be the best apocalypse to be part of?
The best apocalypse?
The best apocalypse.
What apocalypse do you think would be an improvement on the world in which we currently inhabit?
Um...
We get some sort of try and do this without committing genocide.
We get some sort of like some sort of economical situation where everybody is taken care of.
Nobody has to work anymore.
And then a scientist invents a drug that feels better than any other drug, but is totally harmless.
And the apocalypse is just that everyone becomes so hedonically satiated and pointless.
Like there's nothing else that is worth doing except doing the drug.
Just just constantly writhing in pure bliss with no economic or health implications.
Yeah.
Like even like sex isn't even worth it anymore.
So the human, human race dies out because it's just like why would I do that when I can smoke, you know whatever.
Is that kind of Brave New World?
What are we calling it?
We need to make up this drug.
I don't know.
They have a lot of sex in Brave New World, but I don't know if they copulate.
Yeah, I guess that's true, but they, yeah.
The drug would be called Fuck It All, but it would be I-T-O-L, like a pharmaceutical.
What are the side effects?
The side effects are bliss.
Side effects of Fuck It All include...
Having a good time.
Having a good time.
Loving life.
Constantly orgasming.
Being chill as fuck.
Exactly.
Well, you can be chill as fuck.
If you subscribe to Noclip2, do it now, folks.
It's happened.
It hasn't happened at the time of recording, but by the time of recording we'll have announced and launched Noclip2, our video game coverage wing, the militant wing of Noclip, as I've been sort of calling it on my mood boards.
And yes, we are.
We're we're we're getting out there.
It's been years and years of testing stuff out on no clip crew and just at least a year of us like hardcore, brainstorming what this thing would be and what.
What's the the right way to tackle this whole thing.
There was a chance it could have been called something else at some other time, but keeping it within the Noclip family seemed to make a lot of sense.
And yeah, in case you haven't watched the announcement video yet, it's effectively us saying putting it out there to do a breed of games coverage that we think is important for the industry, in the same ways that nine years ago.
By the way, happy ninth birthday.
No clip.
It is our birthday today.
Woo hoo.
Yeah, let's not clap too loudly, guys.
Yeah, yeah.
Frank didn't even put his hands up.
Come on, let's get this.
I don't want to put any noise pollution in the mic.
Nine more years.
Let's go.
Nine more years.
Nine more years.
And then what?
One more year.
We'll be as old as my cash.
Exactly.
One year and then let's wrap it up.
Decade, that's good enough.
We tried.
That's when The Simpsons peaked.
Exactly.
Yeah, that's us right now.
So yeah, like nine years ago, tried to think up something that no one else was doing, that you know I thought was important for the industry.
And it seems like it is somewhat important, at least to the people in our community, to document all this stuff.
And similarly, I think.
Games coverage needs to have a bit of a shake up as well.
And instead of following the trends, we're going to try and create a new one.
And that is focusing a lot of attention on games that sort of espouse a sort of game design and development philosophy that we think is healthy and good for the industry.
An industry that perhaps is stagnating in ways that is going to affect us all.
Highlighting those games, putting in the work to discover developers who are working on interesting stuff.
Celebrating big games that also take big swings from big studios.
And and getting out there on the streets and covering not just, you know, previews of these games and getting out and talking to people about these games and, instead of focusing on the numbers and the Steam reviews and the the, the sales of these, like attacking these games from a position of what we like about them artistically and how they make us feel um, and similarly, with previews, talking to developers from that perspective, not talking to them about it from a an angle of like why you know who does this, who's this game for and what's its genre.
But like, where did this come from?
What's the, What's the motivation behind this mechanic?
Like, what about your older games influenced this?
Yada, yada, yada.
Like the stuff that is like important about games development design.
It just gets swept under the rug in the sort of the numbers based conversations that we constantly have.
And, on top of that, games culture, like what's going on in the world of We seem to we've, we're so inundated with, with stories about what's happening in game or what's happening around the world via not just YouTube, but like social media and the shortening of social media, video on stuff like TikTok and Instagram.
And they can give you this idea that where you've got sort of a 24-7, 360 video. or 360 degree view of what's going on in culture all the time but what's happening is we're just getting this weird funnel again it's everyone's chasing the algorithm so what is actually going on out there and what are people playing what's going on in your local DDR arcade you know what's what's uh what's it like on the street you know and i think um yeah i think as people who produce video we're in a really good position to do this and um we're gonna give it a go and see if it works and if it doesn't work we try to break new ground and, and make a new type of games coverage.
And if it does, then hopefully we can have some sort of a positive effect and trickle effect on not just uh you know the industry but maybe on the way people report on games, maybe the way um uh studios are able to market their stuff, whatever it is like um, just push it pushing nudging, i'll say nudging the industry in a way we think is positive um.
So yeah, if you, if you want to follow us along on this journey, um youtubecom slash, noclip2 or whatever they do at noclip2 um, just type noclip2 into uh google and you'll get it.
In fact, if you type noclip crew, and it probably still comes up, if you're subscribed to two, you're subscribed to uh, or crew, you're subscribed to two.
Um Also, we're going to be obviously doing a Patreon for this, but one of the big pushes we're doing on our Patreon is the free tier.
We're going to be doing a monthly newsletter, slash magazine type thing, which is basically going to collect up all the games we think that are popular, worth wishlisting, all the games that we think are out now that you can play demos of, or out now in early access or past 10 uh articles and and podcasts and other stuff that we have.
Um, from outside the world of noclip that we think are worth checking out on as well.
Um and again, just trying to get Information and get stuff out there that we think is positive and important and I think is going to be way more important than the next five years.
Um, maybe threw all our lot in on social media and edit that stuff doesn't work.
A lot of the communities and small communities that we used to be part of back in the good old days, where you went to websites and BBSs and stuff like that.
Um, I think we're going to start pulling back to that.
So we want to be part of, like you know, a a community of people who cares about this stuff, and we want to be able to share that.
And what we think is important and work with the community on that too, like with those loads of initiatives and ideas we have for the the, the channel and the patron and everything else to to to do that sort of stuff.
So we are doing the patron as well.
I just hate the idea of doing a second Patreon for something unless it has like, a genuinely different mission to Noclip and is something that we think we can really make do with people's funding.
We already own the cameras.
We already have the staff.
We already have the name recognition on Noclip.
It's just a case of us being able to put budget to the side there.
And for the past two years, I've been funding this out of my pocket on the noclip crew side.
So this is basically a way to make it so that this stuff can be sustainable, but also expand.
Obviously what we're doing crew is just sort of a place we were kind of playing around on for the past few years trying to figure it all out.
So, yeah, patreon.com slash noclip2 if you're interested at all.
There are three tiers on there.
It's pretty simple.
Five bucks gets you access to bonus podcasts and bonus videos and bonus articles every month.
Ten bucks is going to get you early access, and we're going to do community game nights on that one as well, I'm pretty sure.
And then 30 is for your name on the credits on stuff on noclip2.com. um as well and we're just going to launch with that and see um how we do and and then like build our build our community if you're uh the other option as well as if you're a member of noclip2 or noclip you get access to noclip discord so um that'll be on all the tiers as well um so you can join us on there it's still a closed discord group but we're going to be using it uh more than ever to uh accrue feedback to surface games uh to help with the discovery stuff as well and then if you're a developer i we're going to announce this probably in the next couple of weeks because i don't i don't want to i don't want it to be overshadowed by the announcement of noclip 2 writ large but there's going to be a couple of things that we want you to do if you want us to cover your game or if you want help in getting your game's name out there one of them is that there is a submission form up on the noclip.video website if you go to noclip.video and then click on submissions there is a form that you can fill out which basically is like name Email the name of your game, a brief description of you, your team, the game, your story.
And if you have a key somewhere to put the key for us to actually play it.
And that's going to be one way that we ask people to just let us know about the games that they have out there.
And we're also going to have the email address submissions at no clip video.
And then, on top of that, we are going to be opening up this podcast to not advertising, because we never do ads on this podcast and we likely will never do ads.
But we're going to be opening it up.
So if people who are have games want to record their own short podcast funny ads for their games, we will be using the section on this podcast to highlight and probably the best one or two of those every week and then we'll probably throw the rest of them that get sent in if there are any more in on the end of the podcast as well, just as a way of again opening up Us and Noclip and everything we do, more it being more of a community, a place that folks are exchanging games and ideas and all that sort of stuff.
My dream is to eventually open it up where we can really have people within the community writing articles and recommending stuff and doing that type of thing as well.
But if that's something we're going to have to build to it.
And then on the selfish side as well.
I'm excited to hopefully.
It all depends on how the push goes for this.
But get back to the world of recording op eds.
I know Jeremy's very interested in doing stuff like that as well uh, reporting opinion videos uh, in more indie recommendations, like jesse's been doing, um and and all that stuff.
So go check out the, the video, if you go, check out the trailer, if you're interested in what we're doing, and uh yeah, just like, follow us on on uh, on patreon and and get access to that newsletter.
Uh, subscribe to the channel, like the videos do.
All that sort of stuff help us get up to um.
It'd be great to get up to 100 000 subs by the end of the year on that um, on that channel.
Um yeah, and uh.
If you believe, like i do, and i think some of the folks here do as well that games coverage is essential but has to be worthwhile in and of itself.
It can't just be chasing views or or or behind the trend.
It has to break ground and show people what's important rather than sort of asking is this important?
Um, then please, uh, uh, support us on this, uh, this, this new journey of no clip too.
And there you go, folks.
I did it.
The spiel is over.
Shall we talk about Silksong for two hours?
Is that what we're doing today?
I guess.
I don't know.
What's the plan?
Yeah, we're covering small indie games.
That's our big focus here at Noclip and Noclip2 is to highlight great projects people have never heard of.
Silksong, the sequel to Hollow Knight is here.
Yeah, so we're not doing an indie recommendation video of this one, because it seems probably self-evident that everyone was playing it over the weekend.
Who's played it on the team?
I've played maybe 90 minutes of it.
I haven't.
I actually have code for Ghost of Yotoi, so I've been playing that.
Is it Yotoi or is it Yotay?
Yotay.
It's probably Yotay.
Yeah.
I'm going to defer to basically any of you on that one.
I think I'm the least knowledgeable Japanese speaker here.
Yeah, I can't talk about it yet from a quality perspective.
The embargo is not for, I think, a couple of weeks.
But I've been playing the hell out of that.
So I don't have too much to say about Silksong.
Who's played the most here, maybe?
Probably Jesse.
Probably me.
That's crazy.
How much have you played?
Probably.
Steam says two and a half hours.
There's no possible way I've only played two and a half hours.
I've played it for like at least six.
Oh, all right.
I've played probably about three hours.
Okay.
Frank, you touched it.
I haven't played Hollow Knight 1, so... Oh, fair enough.
So you don't know the story?
No.
Dude, you don't even know what happens to Hollow Knight at the end, dude.
He turns into a banana.
I think they're bugs.
That's all I know.
I think, right?
That's basically... That's the whole story.
You got it.
There's not much to it.
Bugborn.
2D Bugborn.
Do I need to play Hollow Knight 1 to appreciate Silksong or should I die there?
Ooh, that's a good question.
No.
I mean... No?
No?
But like it's a bit like you don't have to play the Yakuza games to appreciate infinite wealth.
Yeah, you're going to get more out of it.
It's like, yeah, it's like Dark Souls.
Well, it's probably more like Dark Souls two than three.
It's like Dark Souls two, except everyone hates Dark Souls two.
So forget it.
So it's not like Dark Souls two.
I like Dark Souls two.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Silksong is out.
It's here.
Long awaited game.
Everyone's psyched about it.
I am curious.
I have I think it's An amazing game.
I also have some more complicated feelings about it and my evolving tastes as a as a human being, since I played Hollow Knight and sort of like how this is such an amazing game.
But I feel different about this type of game, maybe.
But I'm curious how you guys feel about it before I get into the more like gray area.
Yeah, I think I kind of share a similar feeling to you Jeremy because, like Hollow Knight, Silksong for people who somehow have missed this over the last seven years has been in development for a long time.
It was originally supposed to be a DLC for the first Hollow Knight.
It was included as a backer reward for Kickstarter.
I think they did it on Kickstarter.
You're kidding.
Yeah.
Are there people who are getting codes for Silksong based on Kickstarter?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think the case is.
I'm not a hundred percent, but I think it was supposed to be a Wii U release because it's so old.
So people are getting switch codes instead of Wii U code.
Oh, that's too funny, which is, I think that's pretty funny.
Um, Yeah, it's finally here.
It has become a much bigger thing.
It's obviously not a DLC for the first game anymore, which did get a ton of updates on its own.
This is a full fledged sequel to Hollow Knight.
At this point where you're playing as Hornet a sort of zero, I guess, or not zero.
Who's the Mega Man rival character?
Are you thinking of Proto Man?
Protoman yeah yeah, sort of that sort of character.
Well, is zero, right?
I don't know protoman, zero is the final boss in quake 3, so that's clearly what you're referring to.
Zero, i think uh, aesthetically and tonally, is probably more similar to hornet, but okay yeah, i don't know, i could see protoman though, because hornet, i mean you like, fight hornet and holonite.
So yeah, But yeah, so you're playing as essentially a sort of rival character from the first game who now has their own story and their own different mechanics in terms of combat and also exploration.
This time around, it's like way, way better.
I think this is like. like I feel so much better to me.
Gameplay wise, combat feels better.
I like exploring the world more.
I think it looks better.
Obviously, it's the second game, so that's bound to be the case in most cases.
But I'm having a real good time with it.
I think it's a lot harder as well.
A lot of your combat is focused on the needle, which is Hornet's main weapon.
It's pretty similar to the one you have in Hollow Knight.
It's not super long.
You start off in a Metroidvania sort of gameplay style where it's That 2D platformer with areas that you can't reach until you get a different item or power up.
You'll eventually know what they are.
Some of them are the jump is slightly too far or there's a door you can't open.
And part of the joy of the game is exploring and finding shortcuts or new paths and fighting really hard bosses.
This is sort of in that.
I guess dark souls is that.
Is that annoying to say uh, adjacent realm of combat where you're fighting things over and over again, you have resources that get dropped after you fight and uh, lose to an enemy if you do.
Um, and when you go back, you can pick those resources back up.
So it has that sort of mechanic there.
And then the combat, like I said, is um it.
It escalates fairly quickly in terms of challenge just because they keep throwing new mechanics to you that are part of fighting.
I think honestly.
I'm not that far so I don't want to speak too broadly on it, but I think the opening hours of this game are so much stronger than Hollow Knight.
I feel like the pacing is just like unrelenting.
It's so quick and yet also they deliver so much information in that time.
It's like everything has so much detail to it.
It's so beautiful but also like subtle in a lot of its communication of different things.
I yeah danny, you've only played the first like 90 minutes.
What do you think of that opening?
Yeah, i think um, to me, i like i we've talked about this on the podcast about, like a lot of people really like Hollow Knight, because I think they played it pretty early or maybe I think I kind of came to it a bit later and I played maybe more games that have been inspired by it.
So it didn't like sweep me off my feet like it did a lot of people.
And maybe I think just in terms of silly things like camera position and aesthetic like it's it's sort of objectively I can tell that it's like a really gorgeous game it just doesn't necessarily pull on my heartstrings i think is the thing so it's it's it's a series that i'm i'm sort of um uh i i have uh maybe appreciate it from afar i never competed the first whole night i played a lot of it but i never never beat it um so going into this when i was kind of thinking like oh i wonder if this will be the one that like pushes me over the edge or if it's um more of the same or whatever.
And it had been a while since I'd played the first whole night.
So I watched a couple of like YouTube video essay things and gameplay on the first one to sort of remind myself, oh, yeah, like it was kind of like exploration and. combat but like not too tricky and all that stuff um what i've experienced of it so far feels like like sort of uh blasphemous to blasphemous to where you're like oh they know the game they're making now they're tightened up all the screws there's more um you know it again it's like the opening two hours so what am i gonna say but it feels like it has the trajectory of oh i bet the going to be more complicated but more interesting um the the world stuff i can imagine that it might be bigger or more more confident so i can't it's hard for me to say much about it because i'm still in the intro phase of it but i think if it's the one thing i will say is that it feels like hollow night which is you know probably what people wanted and i think if you're not somebody who played hollow night before you didn't necessarily have a massively passionate connection with it i'm not sure this is going to do any different um so yeah i think like more than anything i'm really happy for them that they put out a sequel that people seem to be enjoying and that is incrementally you know, interesting to people who played the first one and more challenging and is giving them what they want.
Because I think I was quite fearful that there was going to be this sort of narrative backlash to the whole thing with, You know, everyone waiting for it for so long and the big story of it, and then memification of the game and all that sort of stuff.
So, yeah, the narrative last week, it's like super sad.
And we've covered this so many times in the documentaries we've we've, we've filmed, you know is that like yes, if you have a lot of resources and you can take the time to make the game you want to make and obviously you're good at making games, which they proved on the first one then um, you're set, you're in a really good position to make a strong game, and this is, This is what's happened.
So, yeah, I'm glad for them.
I am going to play more of it.
But yeah, it's not.
I don't.
I'm pretty sure from the Scuttlebutt from everyone playing this, this is not reinventing the wheel in any way.
Yeah, no, that's it's interesting.
I that's sort of my hang up with it, because there are things that I think are very, you know, like. innovative i guess for lack of a better word um i think the way that hornet has a downward dash instead of just the downward slash that um the the what's the hollow knight protagonist the knight hollow hollow i just played the first 15 hours ago i can't remember um anyway i think it's blinky is that it was john um john knight yeah the downward slash in hollow knight is like It feels so great.
It's used as a platforming element.
It's sort of like the one of the safer combat options if you can master it, and sort of just like bounce around and pogo on enemies um, hollow.
Having this sort of downward diagonal slash is i i feel like is a cool and bold design decision, because in many ways silksong is just you know here's, here's some more hollow knight, but it's like different this time.
I think the downward slash is one of the maybe like the only sort of thing that i thought was really bold about the design in the opening few hours um, because you have to rewrite the muscle memory after you know, whatever 30 hours of hollow knight seven years ago um um, now having to have your sort of like safer downward thing be a more exposed move where you have to position right for the downward dash, hit it, make sure you have sufficient range to hit the enemy, bounce upward and then you have to recorrect if you want to chain it together.
So there's this sort of like dash up, move back.
You know it's like this loop instead of just up uh pogoing, um.
So i really like that and i thought the uh, I thought that the combination of that and the opening bosses I thought were so much harder than Hollow Knight which, like you know, it wasn't like brutal difficulty.
This isn't like a crazy hard game or anything, but there were.
I was surprised that a few of the early bosses like got me in ways that I wasn't expecting.
Or the bell bug does like two hits of damage every time it hits you, which.
I was wondering for the last week why everyone on social media was like come on, like two masks of damage.
I understand now.
So yeah, I think there are elements of it that I can tell that they are updating the idea of what Hollow Knight is for seven years in the future, because I think that there is a an increase in sort of the skill threshold of people who play types of games like this of what they will expect.
And that's a difficult balance to strike as well, because silksong may very well be someone's sort of entry.
I mean, you know, there are there are people who are like 11 years old and they're like what's this silksong thing?
You know, they were like four when hollow knight came out, um.
I think that there there will be people for whom this is sort of their first action platform or like one of the earlier ones for them um, but i, i appreciated the increased uh, sort of difficulty threshold, but i do feel like I'm really enjoying this game.
It's such an accomplishment.
It's so beautiful.
It's like every screenshot I took was like this.
All right, be mean.
Just say it already.
It's not mean.
This is not at all me being like, everyone likes this game.
Let me find something to say bad about it.
It feels so familiar.
And there is something in a world where I have now played, like you know, animal well and rain world and a lot of these sort of like actiony, puzzly platformers that take weird risks in their format, in their presentation, in their gameplay, in their mechanics.
Um, playing something that's so straightforwardly an action platformer, it feels a little different.
It made a lot of money.
They could take their time.
They could make the game they wanted to.
It is...
And they clearly made the game they wanted to because they took their time with it.
It is interesting to me that the choice that they made was to make a very faithful sequel, instead of saying, like we're the people that made Hollow Knight.
It would be interesting to see a totally different vision from the people that made Hollow Knight, instead of a continuation of that original vision.
Because I also feel like the vision for Hollow Knight is sort of itself this nostalgic vision.
You know the like grew up playing Super Nintendo, playing action platformers, playing Mega Man and Metroid and all these things.
And the reason Hollow Knight broke out so much is because people were like wow, it's like, it's one of those.
Is like a golden age of Nintendo action platformer Metroidvania.
And so it does feel a little bit like we're. it's a great game.
It feels, in terms of design, like it is still sort of just ruminating, meditating on these ideas of game design that have been bouncing around in game designers' heads for 30 years.
And so there's a part of me that's like I wonder if there will be a page turn at some point later in this game where I'm like wow, this is so bold and different.
I anticipate probably there will not be.
If you've played 30 hours of Silksong and you're screaming at your microphone right now, I will admit defeat.
Wait until you get to Gloppo.
It gets so much better after Gloppo.
And the whole game flips and you have to go upside down on the ceiling like leap year.
That's a spoiler for a two-hour game.
Never mind, i was gonna spoil something else.
Don't spoil any longer games, but yeah no, i don't know it's.
It is so objectively, a fantastically made game, but there's a part of me that's like I wish it was a little weirder or different.
And I think many people who love Hollow Knight would have been disappointed if it was so.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think um, I think there are parts, at least from where I'm at, that aren't exactly uh, life-changing experiences.
They're not like making me, you know, jump up and down like, wow, they finally did it.
They made Hollow Knight three.
Uh, but like there are parts that are well executed, in a way that I don't think I see a lot of um, a lot of Metroidvanias or a lot of action, platformers whatever genre name we want to use doing this early.
Like there's stuff that's usually like a crescendo moment in, like Ori and the Blind Forest or in Blasphemous 2.
That's just kind of happening in this sort of I guess the first quarter of the game is probably where I'm at at this point.
It's really well executed.
It's very good.
I like the way that the map is handled in this one.
Again, where it's like, you're free to go wherever you want.
And the map sort of wraps around on itself.
You don't have a map for a while as well, like in the first.
So it's, it's got that going for it, which is still great.
Like, but it's, I totally agree with Jeremy.
Like I had this back and forth while playing the, these opening handful of hours where I'm like, this is good, but it's, it's just, it's all the night again.
Like, that's great.
That's you know.
If that's all you want, to even wait in seven years, like he said fantastic, but also the cynical part of me keeps getting worn down.
Like every time I'm thinking, Oh, okay.
All right.
Yeah.
Whatever.
I've played a hundred of these.
I know this genre like the back of my hand.
I'll hit a thing and I'm like Oh dude, that was so good.
That was great.
And then I move on and like, yeah, exactly.
Like like the bottom layer or the bottom level for this game where it hits its lows, is like average good.
Like there's, I have not hit anything that's made me go, this is stupid.
This is bad.
Why did you design it this way?
And then when it hits, it's like, this is better than everything else in the genre.
Like it's, it's so impressive.
I can't like, obviously they they've had tons of time to work on it and they can master it in whatever way that they want to.
But Like, even if it's not doing anything incredibly different to stand out from the genre, sometimes just doing it better than everyone else is enough.
And I feel like there's only so many other games like it's this and like Prince of Persia, The Lost Crown and Blasphemous 2 that to me feel on this level of quality.
Yeah, there's something interesting about it where.
I.
It's kind of like what I think about is movie genres and how movie genres have these tightly clustered like eras where, like the Western for 12 years, it's like everyone that someone made a Western ever was.
Like I could do that.
Let's do that.
And then they just get like better and better and better until they're sort of like superhero movies.
There was like superhero movie, sort of like saturation um, and you see, sort of like the the neo thing happened, where it's like now they're doing like neo westerns or something um, but i wonder yeah, i don't know, i feel like rain world is like the neo western.
And then it is interesting that, like this is this is like john houston is like a hundred years old and he's like i could still make the searchers.
I don't.
Did he make the searchers?
I can't remember who made the searchers.
I haven't seen it since I was like 18 regardless.
It's a metaphor.
Um, I, yeah, I don't know.
This is like a fucking, this is like a 10 out of 10 Western.
I've just seen a thousand Westerns now.
So it's hard for me to, it's not even like cynicism.
I just think it's like, i i think what i like the experience that i value from games these days is often having my sort of like preconceived notions of what a game will be shattered or opening up a game i just talked to a developer about this in a video that's coming out on noclip too so if if this is relevant to you pay attention to that channel.
The idea that when you fire up a game, if you don't know what you do in that game, that is one of the most exciting things that can possibly happen.
So this developer mentioned getting a N64 from a relative And being like, oh, like Mario Kart.
That's like a game.
There's like cars on it.
You race in that game.
Oh, like Smash Brothers.
It looks like they're punching each other and then picking up Super Mario 64 and being like I don't know what that means.
And playing that game, like just exploring until sort of like things to do presented themselves.
And that's the experience that I value so much in playing games.
And so I feel like I will probably not have any experiences like that in Silksong.
So that is sort of the thing that is tugging at me.
That's.
That's a really fantastic way, of great way of putting it, I think, from my experience too, and largely how I sort of interact with most games these days, which is that like I can objectively see that the next Call of Duty is a really well-made game, but I have simply played so many first-person shooters over my life that it just doesn't have the same effect and like that's not.
I think that's why like, These are not necessarily critiques of Silksong.
They are just, you know, reflections of who we are when talking about a game like that.
You know, like the feeling I often bring it up of, like The first time I brought the Unreal Tournament demo home from PC Gamer and thinking wait, you just shoot people.
There's no story?
You just shoot people until you score the most kills and that's it?
Like, what the fuck?
And like that's why I think so many of the games that we talk about and recommend and and cover as well on the dock side are ones that are novel and interesting.
You know, we did a whole doc on immortality for because it was a game that tickled us in like a, in like a way that we didn't hadn't been since since.
Like we fell in love with games.
And we fell in love with games because they were doing all these things.
They were subverting our expectations, or we didn't even have expectations to subvert.
We were just fascinated by this weird, this weird mishmash of media.
So Yeah, I'm happy for them to get it out.
And I don't know about you guys, but I'm really excited to see what they do next.
You know what I mean?
I don't think they'll do another one of these, right?
Yeah it's.
It's kind of smart in a way to like if you did one of these games then do another one.
That's like you know bank those two and then you know, go maybe.
Then it's like you got your joe danger, joe danger the movie and then do no man's sky, you know like number three rev up.
Don't do it on two.
I feel like if you do it on two, maybe maybe you bite off more than you can chew, who knows?
Yeah.
It's also a risky proposition too because, even though I'm citing Rain World as one of these games, that is like reinventing platformers I didn't.
I didn't really like Rain World.
Right.
Yeah.
It's like I appreciate Rain World more than I like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rain World is like a.
It's like a.
It's like a John Cassavetes movie, but not one of the more popular ones where you're like I'm so glad I had that experience.
But, like I, i didn't enjoy it while it was happening.
It was just like i, it moved me, but i was like oh god, rain world.
But but you know, rain world is like a fucking museum piece.
It's like a.
It's an amazing game.
I think games will uh continue to learn from it.
But uh, i didn't.
That doesn't mean i liked it or something, i don't know.
Yeah, i salute it.
It's achievements Yeah, I know.
I know what you mean.
I, uh, I was thinking like, is this, is this going to end up on, on Godi list?
You know, for us, I probably not.
It sounds like it.
Cause I'm, I'm not even really feeling it.
Like I like it, but I can think of nine games that I like more than this already.
Like at least that not like more necessarily, but like feel are more important.
Like I'm not putting this over despilote.
I'm not doing that, right?
Like I'm not even thinking about that in the conversation.
That means a million times more to me.
No matter how good the jumps or the stabbing is in this game or like oh, I got the power up that makes me turn into a ball of gas, or whatever.
That's not a thing.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
I'm not far enough.
It's called a burrito.
Oh, man.
Yeah, that's what happens when you have the Locos Tacos.
It's, you know, it's just too much cheese.
Yeah, I'm not like –
You guys said a couple weeks ago, it's not changing your life.
It's not making me feel anything in particular other than this is good.
I need to feel, man.
I need to feel.
I'm not crying yet.
If weed and alcohol can't get me there, then video games need to.
Fuck it all.
It's this new drug they just invented.
Let me tell you about smoking weed and playing Ghost of Yota.
No, I'm not allowed to talk about embargoes.
I thought you were going to sit down and talk about smoking weed.
I don't know if we're... Is that an embargo?
We have done so much worse than talking about any of that.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I told a story about taking gray area research chemicals.
Yeah, exactly.
We got people to go on grails.
That's the most illegal thing.
We did a whole episode where I pulled up ecstasy data for video game Shaper Presses.
Forgot about that.
Was that on the public feed or was that a Patreon?
That was definitely public feed.
After I prepared that segment, the night before I was laying in bed, falling asleep, and I had a moment of panic where I was like what if there's some Swedish ecstasy mafia?
And they're like, oh he's, he's talking about some Marios.
We need to fucking get this guy.
Cause.
He's like like cause if there was someone.
They all seem to be like video game presses from the same area.
And I may have just been talking about the supply of like one, one group of individual criminals.
And they're like, Holy shit.
He discovered the fucking N64 mafia.
I like the idea that that's where all like the Amiga, like the Scandinavian Amiga demo scene people went, started making ecstasy yeah, because like they got way into clubbing, you know post, post like the demo scene, and then they all just became like retro video.
It's like gianna sister lsd presses around the place.
There is a lot of psychedelia around that era, like the idea of um games coming in through the radio waves.
They're like that's, that's the.
Nothing could be more psychedelic, pirating video games off the radio.
In my mind beautiful, just take a channel that was doing it right as well.
Um, that's the song.
I guess we talked about silk song.
Folks, we did it.
We're a video game podcast.
It happened.
Let me tell you about some of the games that i played this week.
Sure, because i played a lot of games a little bit, and not all of them i want to talk about very long, but some of them I wanted to talk about a little bit.
Mortal Sin came out on 10, which is a game uh, it's a first person roguelike.
I feel like I played a few of these recently.
It's a first person like sword based roguelike um parries and crazy art style.
It looks absolutely ridiculous.
Um, sort of about speed as much as it is about difficulty.
Um, I've not played enough of it.
I need to dive a bit more into it, but I just wanted to give people a heads up.
The reviews on it are pretty positive and pretty good.
And it's got a sick art style to it.
I'm a big fan of how this game looks.
You fight a bipedal shark in a ship at one stage.
It's a good time.
It's a good fun time.
I also played the demo of Vital Shell that came out two days ago.
This is PS1 Vampire Survivors.
So maybe PS2, Vampire Survivors.
It is like a 3D... Things are spawning in.
There's waves of them.
They're trying to kill you.
But the aesthetic of it is so aggressively... Yeah, it's PS2.
It's early PS2 kind of looking music like the sick drum and bass playing while you're playing you're a mech who's uh walking around and killing these weird things.
It costs like i think no sorry, it's not out yet, it's not out until next year, but there's a demo up um, so i wanted to shout that one out.
I also played davey x jones.
Have any of you heard of this?
It's a first person, uh like slimy shooter, right.
Yeah.
It's like a.
It's like a first person story driven, like you know, in a first person games, or just like story games.
You know, back in the day it's one of those.
But you are, you're Davy Jones, but you're like davey jones, i guess.
Uh, his head and his body have become separated, while when he was like killed and cast down to the bottom of the ocean.
So davey is the body and jones is the head and you are uh, and almost like sort of the darkness style.
You can send the head out to do things, to like collect stuff and attack things and do stuff and the, the head, talks and again, it has an insane art style.
Um, but this game came out.
It's like it's like fairly high budget, it's like has like like voice acting and like crazy well-made cut scenes and all this sort of stuff, and like i didn't hear anything about this.
Um, it's ten dollars on early access.
So it's like an early access narrative first person shooter.
Um, it's interesting.
I'm not sure how much i love it.
I don't like how much I like it.
I have to play some more of it, but I wanted to bring it up because it was just a weird oddity in a game that, like I, did not hear about at all from anywhere.
And then the game that I played the most this week.
Oh, dear Lord.
It's called Road to Empress.
Oh, no way, you played that.
I played it.
So did you hear about this?
This is the wrong person to be talking about this one.
You think yeah, what the hell, what the hell, why did you?
Why did you not?
I want to play this.
I want to put 200 hours of this over silk song.
Come on, do you know how much frank wants to play games like this and talk about them?
And it's like don't do that, that's just this.
Yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah, you're right.
This is like you went to japan without frank and reported on how cool wrestling is.
How dare you, how dare you?
Daniel, this is like wuxia stuff.
Tell me about this.
This looks cool.
What's wuxia?
Wuxia is like see, fake fan.
He doesn't even know what wuxia is.
When your dad jumps, like drives over a hill.
So when a joke goes over your head No, but like in Hong Kong and Chinese cinema, it's like the wire fu.
It's like the Dynasty Wars era martial arts.
Yeah, all that stuff.
Okay, okay.
So I've talked about the Steam porn games before, right?
This is not one of those.
But it follows a similar mechanic to the Steam porn games, which is that you're basically like –
So the steam, the steam, like hentai games, are a bunch of like screens of people you talk, like dialogue happening.
And then every once in a while you making saying something and sometimes it has a causal decision.
Right.
And then eventually you end up. having sex with a tentacle, right?
So like.
But like, it's a story that's playing out and you have some autonomy, and if you make bad decisions, sometimes the game goes bah, you made the wrong decision and spits you back to the decision right.
That's kind of like the flow of these games.
Or a visual novel, yeah.
Exactly, right?
So this is a visual novel in the same sort of idea, but instead of static.
This is self-evident to anyone who just goes to the Steam page, but for our listeners, instead of static cartoon pictures, it is highly produced Japanese film.
Like...
The type that makes immortality look cheap.
Like this looks like a prestige show that it was filmed in Japan.
It is.
I think this is Chinese.
It's got to be Chinese.
Oh, sorry.
OK, well, there you go.
Show how much of a fucking fake fan I am.
Right.
It is.
It is insane.
So this game you play is like a, like a.
They're called karens, i think.
Oh no wait, what?
The manager exactly?
The emperor kairan, maybe it's like courtesans, basically like the new wave of like courtesans to come into this, like the empress's house and you're you know you're going to come in and you're going to become one of the helpers, basically right around the thing, but like you have to make decisions.
So you're just watching a movie and then you make a decision and then the thing plays out.
But what i've enjoyed about this and this has to be, i feel like i'm explaining like roguelikes or something like this is probably a genre of thing that i have just not really interacted with much at all.
I've played some of the hentai games right i'm, we talked about this before.
Okay, I played some.
I needed to know what they were about.
I needed to know.
It was for research purposes.
Yeah, for research.
Important research.
The IRS got a list of itemized games that you played.
Oh, I absolutely wrote off.
Yeah.
I can't even see what they're called, whatever they're called.
So I've played some of them.
So I get I get the sort of the general gameplay moments.
When you say the general gameplay, do you just mean like picking dialogue options?
It's predominantly visuals novels, I guess.
I guess it's because visual novels, I feel like they have losers.
There's something very copy and paste about the hentai game subgenre on Steam where it is almost the exact same length and amount of characters you're going to be talking to set up like like visual novels i feel like have a degree of artistry in them that like this is a particular subset of those that is like weirdly i don't know gameplay wise boxed in or something okay um So these are, I have really enjoyed this because, so to let you know, the first like major decision I had to make was like this little hairpin drops on the ground and you have to say whether or not, and the emperor sees it, she wants to know who owns the thing, right? and you can either say it's it was yours which it wasn't it was someone else behind you you can say it was the person behind you you can say it was i don't know where it landed right i made a decision and the game continued and it was like oh this like dialogue scene continued i was like cool and and then it turns out that i made the wrong decision i guess because me and this other person were like brought down into this like crypt and i was like oh shit i guess i'm gonna have to escape the crypt right and then they just straight up like there's like a scene where they like heat up like a heated iron like a branding iron and they stick it on the other woman's face so i'm like jesus this is this game is nuts and i'm like that's crazy and i wonder how my character is going to get out of this situation right because like she's next right and it's like classic film like shit and then we'll see what happens No, they just fucking brand my character on the face and it comes up like fucking game over.
You made the wrong call.
But it was like four minutes earlier.
I watched.
It wasn't like I made the wrong call and then immediately the game like threw up a cul-de-sac.
No, I had this like protractor.
Oh, this is what happens.
This is what, what would have gone down.
And it helps me inform the decision to make when it sent me back.
And what it has is the menu system.
And when you go into the game, literally shows you the entire story, each break point and where it lets you go.
And you can just go back and play, uncover all of the different variety of things that you could do.
It's kind of the point of the game is like that you're not you're trying to beat the story sure, but it's also like oh, this is what would have happened in the movie or in the game had you made this other decision.
And it's like really compelling and interesting and weird.
And the acting is really good.
And like it's really beautifully shot.
And the production design and like, you know, this is straight up like whatever.
I don't know.
I didn't I was calling this Japan.
So I'm not going to try and pick out which dynasty of China this is.
But like it's taking place at a temple and like the sets are good.
And yeah, it's like, the makeup is amazing, like it's it works.
It's got widescreen support.
So i don't know how they shot it, but like it straight up, like looks like uh, like panavision on my anamorphic video.
It's an anamorphic video game.
Yeah, it's incredible.
So yeah, i have.
I have really enjoyed playing this absolutely weird game.
I don't know how long it is.
It's only like eight dollars fifty cents um.
The studio who made it we made released one previous game on Steam, but it is only available in China.
I believe you can't even buy it.
And yeah, it's just it's really weird.
It's like immortality with like a way bigger budget.
It's not as good, I imagine.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I don't bet.
Let me know the part.
Never mind.
I'm not going to say it.
It's like an FMV game of like a really well produced FMV game, which is the opposite of what I think about when I think of FMV.
I think, oh, chintzy and kind of charming because it's so cheap.
Um, but yeah, I'm like weirdly into this thing.
It's very strange.
Dude, there's an endless sea of games like this.
Like there's so many, I don't know how many of them have English subtitles, if at all, but or any localization for that matter.
Right.
There are a ton of, of Chinese and Japanese, uh, FMV games that look crazy good.
Like, I don't, I think some of them are done.
I'm not a hundred percent, but Cass is really big into, uh, Korean dramas.
And I think there's a couple Korean ones like this as well.
And the production studios that work on those shows that are just pumping them out and they look pretty good.
Some of them work on these FMV games, which is like.
That makes perfect sense that the production studios would overlap.
If you've access to a temple shit, loads of costumes and all of these actors, this probably is makes a lot of sense to like shoot what is probably a couple of episodes of a TV show and then.
Put it out, especially.
Yeah.
So I assumed when I was playing this that I've stumbled into a, a genre unto itself, that this is like this level of FMV quality is is more normal in China, or something, but I but I'd never seen any of these games.
Do you guys know any other games?
It's not like the same genre or setting, but there's a game I really like called knowledge or no lady.
That takes place at a university.
But I thought that one was actually like pretty charming, but it is more on the cheap side where it's like it's like the same Ikea apartments, but it's like.
I played a ton of these games and they're all like they're cute.
They're silly.
Like, like it's very they're all very self-aware.
But yeah, there's like I have like a dozens of these on my wishlist and I'll buy one every few months and play through them.
And like they always take like three to four hours to be and yeah, you can go back and choose different endings and stuff.
Um, but uh.
Yeah, the road to Empress looks more like a game of Thrones production, which looks cool.
So I think, like looking at knowledge or no lady, that looks a bit more like visual novels, as I would think of them.
Whereas, like I, there's something about the production on this where it never leaves the video, the film.
So the film will pause and an element will appear on it.
And it has like a really well done playback.
Like literally when you touch the mouse, the playback thing is at the bottom.
You can straight up just two X speed.
The game like on like a YouTube little speed thing in the corner.
Like it has or maybe it's one to five and one point five.
But it seems like the production is like slick in a way that is different, is different to some of those visual novels where it's a bit more like frame in frame or like this is kind of a CG room cartoon.
And then we're going to show a video thing like this is all video all the time from top to bottom.
And yeah, really, really well produced as well.
The fact that they're called Kyren, which I'm now reading as Karen, because you said it is cracking me up because all the screenshots are like fifth rank Karen.
One of them says Karen Wu, which sounds just like a contemporary woman's name.
And then there's a screenshot of her holding a Pomeranian.
So I'm just imagining she's your like wine mom neighbor also, i don't think.
I just googled the history of pomeranians.
I don't know if they had pomeranians in in the tang dynasty.
Hey, come on.
All right, any dog, things aren't recorded in history.
I mean they could have hired a dog history consultant.
Lazy you and your canine eugenics, deadly soup.
Look at all these amazing chapter breakdown things i can't wait to.
Yeah, it's.
It's a very Weird thing.
If anyone who's listening has played some more of these games, send them my way after.
Frank, what was the game you recommended last week?
Happy Hamster Days or something?
Yeah, Hamster.
I think it's called Hamster Days.
That's Sweet Hamster Days.
That one's coming out.
That one is Japanese.
That one's coming out at the end of the year.
That one I'm very excited about.
There you go.
If you're looking for another one, there you go, Danny.
But again, I feel like there is a distinction between... Have some respect, all right?
I have nothing against the Sweet Hamster people, but like...
Yeah.
Is it just I'm looking at it now.
Is it just that these are.
No, I think the other thing is that, like the a lot of these games, it's filmed from the perspective of the protagonist.
Yes, it's the cinematography that makes all the difference.
So that might be it is that this is not this is filmed like a TV show.
And it just so happens that one of the characters is the one you're making the decision for.
But it's not like the characters are playing to the camera.
Yeah.
And you're like, I don't, we're not friends like that.
Stop flirting with me.
Stop bringing the fourth wall.
I'm sitting in the dark in my underwear eating Fritos and I do not want to be interactive.
Every time the screen fades to black, I cry a little bit.
You can't be cute to me right now.
Okay.
So maybe that's what it is.
Maybe you're right, Jeremy.
Cinematography is a big part of why this feels different.
Yeah, because Sweet Hamster Days, it's not like the lighting or the shots are bad or anything.
It's just way more of like an intentional POV thing, where you're, like you know a woman is laying in bed and the camera is like laying in bed next to her.
Right.
And also it's a woman laying in bed, which, you know.
In this one, it's an empress who sits in a bed and people carry her around.
She's in a palanquin being carried around.
It's an important distinction.
What's so wrong with that?
I was trying to remember one that my buddy was talking about.
Canadian Jesse.
Yeah, come on.
Is it really so bad?
We had it great.
We still have the queen on our money, so it's okay.
Or the king now, whatever.
I was trying to remember the one that my buddy was talking about that's like this.
It's called Vanity Fair, The Pursuit.
I don't know if it's in English.
The magazine.
Right yeah, are you allowed?
They finally brought it to steam um, but it has a similar thing like the timeline.
Actually, i'm looking at the screenshots.
It looks like it's not exclusively shot from the perspective of the player.
Yeah, this is, this is more like it.
Yeah yeah, look at that.
Vanity fair, the pursuit, Look at that.
Look at all these dramatic Chinese people.
I can't wait for the FMV series on Noclip 2.
Yeah, absolutely.
We need to talk about underserved games like Road to Empress.
We're not really here to talk about that or Slick Song.
We're here to talk about the game that Frank could not wait to play.
Everybody's Golf Hot Shots is finally out.
It did not change from its original release date.
Um, what are we thinking?
Frank, i hear.
I hear it's not.
Maybe not as hot, maybe it's.
Is it lukewarm shots, how we feel?
Yeah, this is so weird, so it's not by clap hands.
Clap hands is the original, like developer of all the everybody's hot shots golf game.
Again, it's also what's really funny about this game is it's called everybody's got golf hot shots, which is like both the the Japanese title and the English title together.
That's like, if they did like resident evil biohazard, like earthbound mother, like, it's just like, if they're just really just trying to cast a wide net, like, Hey, remember this?
It's, it's that it's everybody's thought.
We just want to make one set of marketing materials.
So everybody's golf hot shots, it's like i would say it's like 70 there.
Um, it's so funny, there's less features in this game than the ps4 version, which came out like seven years ago.
So the last real, the last one that hot that clap hands made, i think, was also called everybody's golf.
Let me, let me double check the one that came out yeah, everybody's golf on ps4 that was actually by clap hand.
That was phenomenal Um, and so yeah, I was like why the hell?
Why haven't they made a new one since then?
Clap hands made a new golf game for switch back in 2021.
Um, I don't know what the hell that one's called.
Hold on.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And so maybe I need to play that one.
That one is, um, easy come easy golf.
I came out.
Yeah.
No kidding.
Terrible name.
But this looks like Hot Shots Golf, but it's only on Switch.
I mean, I guess you play on Switch too.
So they made that.
Yeah, I guess they've still updated it.
So if you look at screenshots, there's like a tour mode.
There's already so much more personality in this 2021 Switch game.
But everybody's golf Hot Shots.
Bandai Namco, I think, gave it to the team that's working on some Digimon games recently.
I look at their previous development history but yeah, I mean it's, it's the basic stuff is still there.
It's chibi cute golf, but yeah, there's the features that are missing from the last one.
You don't make your own character.
That was a big thing that I liked about the previous hot shots golf games.
Even on the PSP one you would customize your character.
You get new outfits.
You can change stuff.
I think sometimes the clothes would have different stat ability.
So it was like a big part of like You would grind golf tournaments and get new clothes and you would dress up and it would change your stats.
Here it's a lot more simple.
There's, like, the tiers.
The beginner tracks, the amateur novice and you do a few missions, then you fight like your rival and then you unlock more courses.
And every time you play, you get money.
You can spend that money on, like, stat increases.
You eat food to increase your stats.
So the basic progression's there, but, yeah, there's just, like, the personality...
It's kind of missing, and it's because Clap Hands isn't making it.
But it's still a fun game.
So again, for context, Everybody's Golf is like the chibi-cute arcade-y version of golf.
This isn't like PGA.
It's not Tiger Woods.
It's not sim golf.
It's cute, fun, as it's always been since the PS1 days.
But it isn't like arcade-y.
It's still like accurate-ish.
You know what I mean?
It's not like, you know... there's like power ups and stuff like that.
It's not all the way like Mario's Mario golf.
It's still, and this is something that's still true.
It's genuinely fun.
Um, you know, assessing like, okay, where do I want this ball to be?
What's the wind trajectory?
What's what like getting your shots?
You can, you can try to do a power shot, but your line of hitting a perfect impact is much smaller.
So it's like if you, if you change your club so you hit it shorter, you have a way more control over the ball.
Things like that.
When you're putting, it's still the same thing.
There's the grid.
You have to.
Yeah, i get so good at like analyzing the lot, the like chalk marks to to judge the slow.
I get so into that.
And when you sink like a putt from like 30 feet, it's the best feeling in the world or you do a chip in all that stuff is still there.
I did read like I had to translate Japanese team reviews, players being like they changed the side spin elements.
What is going on?
Developers, you need to patch your game so hardcore.
Everybody's golf players are mad at this game because I guess like All right.
Like if you're master this series for decades and you play this, it's like wait, this isn't the same.
So I'm very sympathetic.
But if you're a casual player, someone like me, it's like, OK, I can boot up, play a bit.
I do like games like this because this is a game you can play for like 10 minutes around and move on with your day, grind a few missions um, but yeah, it's just something is like the soul of it is missing a bit.
So i kind of wish that they would port easy, come easy golf um, or maybe i just have to get it on switch, but yeah.
So i was a little disappointed and rename it too.
Yeah every yeah, everybody comes, everybody golfs.
Uh, so i don't know so, but i will say it is calm golf.
Yeah, there you go.
It is, I think, only a 40 game, although I was looking at Steam reviews.
Apparently, performance is terrible on Steam Deck, which is so funny because this is the perfect pickup.
Yeah, and so even on PS5 frame rate was fine and then any level that has weather.
If it's raining all of a sudden, the performance is shitty.
And it's like, what happened?
I don't know.
That's also regular golf.
I get way worse at it when it's raining.
So, yeah, I don't know if they're going to patch it or fix it.
If this is just a budget thing they just put out.
I don't know.
So... yeah, it's, it's okay, but it's hot shots golf and I like it and I'll always get these.
But yeah, I think, I think the real thing is I just need to pay by this, uh, this old switch game.
Yeah.
Go check that out.
Come back, come back and fill us in on, on that madness.
Easy comeback.
What i actually am way more excited to hear you talk about is chronos new dawn.
Have you played much of this?
This, this is a like a survival horror game.
It's blooper team's non-silent hill game, i guess.
Uh and, and people seem to be into it um what, how much have you played of of?
Uh, what is it?
Chronos new dawn?
Yeah chronos, chronos new dawn.
So this is by bloober bloober, not blooper bloober Bluebird team, the team that handled the Silent Hill to remake and the team that did the medium, which was years ago, kind of a very Silent Hill like puzzle game.
This game is cool because it's like it's the inverse.
I wanted to like the medium, but it's a survival horror game with all puzzles, no combat.
Right now they.
They started development on this immediately after they finished the medium, simultaneously as they were doing Silent Hill two remake.
So I was curious, like, did they just make, how did, how did this come out so quickly?
They were simultaneous development.
So Kronos is a survival horror game that's all combat, no puzzle, very little puzzles.
So this is, like, more my lane.
It is a little bit slower.
It is a little bit, like, I want to use the word chunkier just because this is more, I would say, like, dead space because it is your shooting, like, when I say the thing, I mean, like, John Carpenter's thing, giant monsters with, like, loops and blobs and ten like it's it's nasty in a good way but then you have to like stomp the hell out of them the cool mechanic with this game is uh as monsters as like new monsters come out they will assimilate bodies on the ground so if you don't like stomp or burn the bodies on the ground the monsters will get even like tougher which is kind of like how resident evil 1 remake does it with their um what the hell is it called the crimson head mechanic so i was like okay that's the the it's it's pretty cool the setting of this game is where i'm a little like ah whatever so uh again i really like sun hill and resident evil because it's like americana here the setting is kind of an a um a more sci-fi version of like 1980s poland but the story of it is is The reason it's Kronos New Dawn, it's kind of got a time travel thing.
This is all early setup.
You're some unknown traveler and you're coming to assess an area and find out what happened in this area.
And you're getting, like, Last of Us or any survival horror game documents of what's going on.
And so you're just going through, like...
I don't know.
Eastern European apartment buildings.
I'm like, oh, this, it also kind of looks like how half-life two looks.
I'm just like, I'm so sick of this environment.
I spent too much.
I've spent, I like, it is just kind of that of just like having to do the half-life two last year.
We played so much of that as a kid going to rush in the nineties.
I'm like I just I was sick of this, but but um, i'm kind of like maybe that's better than a spaceship.
If they're going for a dead space thing.
It is very sci-fi.
Um yeah, so it's cool.
I'm again like maybe three hours in, but it's.
It's definitely on the needle of like oh no, this is cool.
It's a little bit slower pace, but now, getting into, i'm getting more weapons.
I just fought a boss.
That was like genuinely intense.
This has a pretty friendly checkpoint system.
There are manual save states.
You find rooms I forget what they call it, but it's like oh, you found a traveler's den.
You should stock up, whatever.
So it's kind of like how Evil Within, which is another survival horror game I, like you, have an upgrade station.
Just like Dead Space, you can upgrade your suit.
You can upgrade your guns.
There's a cool crafting system that's not complicated.
Again kind of like The Last of Us, where you'll find either like bolts or just whatever the game's resources are.
And you can choose to spend that on ammo or health.
So that makes it dynamic.
The game also kind of has dynamic loot.
Like, oh no, I have no health items.
I shot an enemy.
Oh, thank you.
It dropped a small health item.
Like it kind of throws you a bone.
So it's not too punishing, which I really appreciate.
I think some of my hesitancy against playing Hollow Knight or Silksong is I just don't want to play a hard game.
I'm just mentally, I'm just not in that mood right now.
I'm sure sometime Kronos is the thing where it's kind of tough, but if you die it's like okay, you're just like two rooms over.
So it's, it's cool.
It says up front, too, it's like, death is a part of the experiment.
When you die, it teaches the way forward.
So I'm like, okay.
So yeah, I think there's English all-language option, voice option only and then tons of language support.
Because it would have been kind of cool to play this in Poland.
Is Bloober Team based in Poland?
I'm just assuming.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
So yeah, I'm sure also too, if you're in Europe or in Poland, I'm sure there's like you would recognize locations.
And so it seemed like there was an early cut scene where there's like a very famous building.
The guy's like, oh no look, what happened to this thing?
And i'm like i have no idea what that is.
I'm sure that's, i'm sure that's the equivalent of, like our nice.
How far are you into it?
At the moment, i would say three hours, and i just hit like um, like uh, a time shift.
And now so it's kind of like how silent hill where you go through an area and it's one way and then something happens.
Now it's different.
So now it's like, oh shit, I'm really interested.
So it's.
I'm like oh, I'm kind of yeah, so cool, looks like it's about 12 to 15 hours long or something like that.
Folks are saying so yeah yeah, sounds good yeah, so interesting.
Do you think I'll play some more before next week?
It'll be a good test.
It'll be a good challenge.
I would like to, but yeah, I would say they impressed me.
I was disappointed by the medium because it was such a cool setting in the game, but it's like I don't want to do puzzles.
Silent Hill 2 was awesome.
Good mix of combat and puzzles the, the.
This is way more combat, kind of like dead space.
Um so, and i've been in the mood to play something like dead space or as an evil.
So i feel like, if you like survival horror, i feel like we always get at least one per fall.
I think this one does hit the mark.
And then um yeah credit, i believe his name.
Uh uh, the developer of gloomwood sung its praises on on twitter a blue sky, and they're always so like dead on with the recommendation.
So i was like okay, let me check this out.
And i was Yeah, I was impressed by it.
So, yeah, it's it's good.
I wish it was a little bit more faster.
OK, like a little bit more speedier.
But yeah, I guess it is.
And the one thing it's missing from Silent Hill 2 is it doesn't have Silent Hill 2's incredible soundtrack.
You know, but it's cool.
What is the music then if the soundtrack isn't like bang and bang?
Kind of Carpenter synths, John Carpenter.
They're going for that vibe.
So I'm like, OK, cool.
So it's I.
It's kind of thing where I appreciate everything it's pulling from and so it's like it's not like a 10 out of 10 for me, but i'm like it's like a 7 out of 10 like yeah, this is okay cool i, i again we don't get that many games like this, so it's like i'll take it, so it's cool, and it is kind of like triple a third person, like of that space speed, so it's yeah, it's cool.
Chronos, the new dawn, available on lots of things, i think.
Yeah, it's 60 bucks on steam, it is a full price game.
Yeah, from the folks at Bloober Team.
So thanks for giving it a whirl for us there, Frank.
Um, any other business before we jump into emails folks anyone, anything anyone wants to chat about in particular uh, i would briefly love to talk about battles without honor and humanity.
Okay um, this is a.
So there is a genre of films in japan uh, that are yakuza films.
They're sort of the.
You know, the american equivalent would be like gangster films um, or like mafia films, i guess um, And I think that the old I've seen like a few of these.
My favorite is probably Drunken Angel by Akira Kurosawa.
Very good film.
Early Toshio Mifune movie, where he plays a Yakuza who is dying of an illness and because of toxic masculinity, is like I'm fine.
Let me just go drinking.
And a doctor's like no, you shouldn't do that.
Um, but i have played more of the yakuza games since i saw that movie and have been kind of interested in this film genre because it's like it.
It's like if you made a, if you made a mafia movie or mafia game in america not mafia like the game's mafia, but if you made like a scorsese mafia game in 2025 uh, it would draw upon all of these sort of like common tropes and ideas in the genre that people would just inherently recognize that even if you hadn't seen like Goodfellas, you'd be like oh, that's like liking Goodfellas.
And so I was curious to I'm going to play Kiwami 2 soon.
So I was curious to kind of like explore this movie genre a little bit.
So I watched Battles Without Honor and Humanity, which is, Some people will say it's like the Japanese version of the Godfather, or Japanese equivalent of the Godfather.
Essentially is a five film series about the Yakuza.
It was released in the West as the Yakuza Papers.
And the reason for that is that it was based on a book that a journalist put together by interviewing a real Yakuza about his entire sort of career in the Japanese criminal underground.
So what's interesting to me about this is that a lot of the tropes featured in that book and then subsequently in these movies are things that became like mainstays of the genre.
It's like I saw a ton of the Yakuza games tropes reflected in the movie I watched.
But the interesting thing about it is that they're not just like sort of cultural osmosis things, where it's like you hear about them.
They're like that.
There is a sort of uh like a, a Dead Sea Scrolls origin text in these Yakuza papers in this book.
That is a real interview with a real Yakuza, which I thought was cool.
Um, cool.
So I watched the first of the five battles without honor in humanity films.
And, uh, And it was utterly fascinating.
Like, it's... The setting was... Are they hurling bikes at people?
Like, when you say similar themes to the Yakuza game, like, how far back are we going?
Crap.
Yeah, there's just... You ride a dolphin.
Yeah, it's definitely less ridiculous, although I will say, even though most of it is very... Also, I should... trigger warning this movie opens in with a horrible shit it's a very violent and terrible movie but it's it's a it's a good movie as well um but there it's so like the title of it's doing a good job to signal that there is no honor and there is no humanity um There when there were moments that were had a little bit of levity, I was like, ah, OK, I could see like a little bit of that Japanese sense of humor peeking in, even in such a serious film.
An example, I'll only give one example, so I don't spoil a bunch of stuff about this movie.
But there is a guy who has to chop his pinky finger off and you know, to save face for the family, as happens so often in Yakuza media, and it's the first time he's ever done it.
So there's a lady there, an older lady who has been around the yakuza longer and she's like i know how to do it.
And they're all the men gather around, they're like, how do you do it?
How do you do it?
And she's like oh, you gotta do it like this, you put your finger, you do it like this.
And the guy's like, all right, let me do it.
And he does it.
And then obviously you know, screams and pain and recoils and everyone like freaks out and um, they have to present the finger to an opposing Yakuza family's like mob boss, as like an apology for something that happened.
But the finger gets lost in the shuffle when he cuts it off.
And so everyone's like scrambling around.
They're like, where did it go?
Where did it go?
So it's a bunch of people looking for the fingertip that got cut off.
And then and then eventually they found that a that it flew into the yard and a chicken stole.
Oh, no.
So there is a little bit of that Yakuza flair there.
This movie is from 1973 as well.
I don't know, grounded in that way.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's.
That's kind of.
What's so interesting about it is that it has that origin in a real like longitudinal interview that journalists did with a real Yakuza.
Is that um, a lot of the sort of like petty dramas that happened between these Yakuza families and the uh, initiation rituals and sort of the the, the types of conflicts that happen, feel very grounded and realistic.
Um, And the other thing is, I think that the setting of this is probably the most fascinating thing about it, because the the, the Yakuza games are more contemporary.
The Yakuza games the Frank, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but zero is the farthest back into the 80s, right?
Yeah, not counting the samurai stuff.
Yeah, so Isshin is the exception.
But this takes place directly after World War II.
And so what's interesting about it is, I think it starts in 46 or 47, so the opening makes it very clear.
The opening shot of the film is a still photograph, a real still photograph of an atomic bomb explosion of the mushroom cloud.
So does it have the logo superimposed on it?
Uh, I think it might, or the titles.
Yeah.
Cause it just says that on Wikipedia.
And I saw that.
I was like, that's so hard.
It's the hardest.
Oh my God.
And then it gets way crazier that I and things I won't describe on this podcast for the listener's sake.
But, um, uh but the interesting power dynamic of this post-war japan is so fascinating because it is there's it's sort of like usually in yakuza media you have the all the yakuza warring sort of like factions and then you'll have like the like oh there's like all the yakuza families and there's like the chinese mob and the korean mob and all these things uh and then there's the police as like this sort of overarching like don't piss off the police you know like it's not an honor thing it's just like a it makes sense like if you kill a cop the whole family's going down um in this because it's directly post-war it's occupied post-war japan and so they're the yakuza and the japanese police are both sort of this lower rung And above them are American GIs who are sort of like, you know, running rampant and doing whatever the fuck they want.
And so the opening is a conflict between future Yakuza and these American GIs who are harassing a local woman.
And the police show up.
And instead of being like, what are you doing?
They're like, don't fuck with the GIs.
Like, don't they're going to bring down the hammer on us.
And then the military police show up.
And so there's this sort of like four tiered power structure thing happening of occupied Japan.
That complicates the whole Yakuza thing.
And it's really, really interesting.
It adds a really interesting wrinkle to the story, having it set in that time period.
This may be a complete out of nowhere connection, but is there any connection?
You know just, there has been so much of the, you know seven samurai, and then you know the American Westerns, like the co-opting of of Asian cinema to the West.
There's that new Paul Thomas Anderson movie coming out one battle after another and, with is there any do you know if there's any connection between that and this because i think it's a similar thing of like it's not like organized crime but it's like rungs of power in a power vacuum sort of state i think it's set in like future america or something like that interesting i might be i may be making i might be making a big reach here but i think i'm sensitive to like what's the american version of this yeah that has been co-opted or whatever i i remember watching the trailer for this i feel like this might be a little different i feel like the equivalent would be something more like um like good fellas i don't although i think when was the mario putzo godfather novel written i think it might predate yes that was the 60 69 and the original yeah it's yeah it's yeah i i i think that they i think they're both just like drawing upon criminal undergrounds that are right but i i would be shocked if the two genres hadn't borrowed from each other if this wasn't informed by sort of like american italian stuff and back and forth back forth yeah um But it was it was really interesting.
And the other thing I'll mention is that the influences not only just like clearly, Nogoshi saw these movies.
They're incredibly famous.
And also there's like the protagonist Hiroto Shozo feels very much like a slightly different flavor of Kiryu character.
This is sort of the most interesting difference between American mob movies and Yakuza movies is that in American mob movies the protagonist is usually not like I'm the one honorable mobster.
It's that like, there is a pretense of like, oh, it's about like protected the family.
Like there is that, but everyone knows that it's like kind of bullshit.
Like the honor thing is like, They're like, we're honorable men.
And it's like, I just saw you, you know, stuff a man in your trunk who was innocent.
And it's just like a kind of a wink and a nod thing in the Yakuza movies that I've seen there.
There often is a protagonist who is sort of like the one, the one guy who adheres to the code, and around him are all these people who are in sort of like moral decay.
And he's like.
He, he emerges victorious because he's the only one who's like if you got to kill me, you got to kill me because, like I'm the one true Yakuza.
And I think that's a really interesting thing is like having a Yakuza who is morally virtuous, because they were sort of like these robin hood figures and a lot of uh media around that time.
Um, but the the connection with the yakuza games is not just tropes, they're also some of the actors in these movies voice acted in the yakuza games as well.
Oh nice um, so i was going down a real rabbit hole reading about that, but anyway uh, battles without honor and humanity.
Uh, don't watch it with your family and heavy trigger warning it's fucked up.
Nice, If you've rinsed all the Yakuza games and are looking for some awesome, you know origin texts or other things, this is uh, seems like a a good thing to dive into.
Yeah, take notes as well.
It's, there's a thousand characters.
Oh funny, i was gonna say the one big notable thing too it's the same director as battle royale.
So if you've seen that oh, is it really?
Yeah yeah really yeah, just the first one, or the whole series, and then he like died and i think his son made this, the sequel, battle rails no no no, the first one of this series.
Or He directed all of the Battles Without Honor and Humanity films.
Oh, wow.
That's cool.
His son did Battle Royale, too.
That's crazy.
I did not know the Battle Royale connection.
That's wild.
Yeah, he also did an adaptation of a Yukio Mishima play and a bunch of other stuff, too.
So, very famous director.
Nice and the games we talked about this week were numerous, mostly silk song, road to impress chronos, new dawn, everybody's golf hot shots and for the most part, a couple of other ones thrown in there davy x jones and mortal sin and vital shell as well.
I think that covered all the game stuff.
Yeah, we got a lot of emails and messages.
If you'd like to have your email read on the show, be sure to send us a letter.
To podcast at noclipvideo.
Electric letter.
Podcast at noclip.video or in our Discord in the Patreon podcast chat channel.
James sent an email and said While me and my wife were in the US recently, we found ourselves in Las Vegas and while there we spent a whole day visiting all the spots from Fallout New Vegas.
When we got home from the trip.
Our time has since been spent playing the game over and over so we could visit the places we had just seen in the US.
The same thing happened with the Division for the Atmosphere and sites we've seen in New York City during a Christmas trip and Fallout 3 for Washington DC a few years ago.
I'm wondering if there are any games you guys have played that after you visit a place, do the memories that you have are the fondest for that location, or just games you play to bring back good memories of a visit to somewhere you were fond of?
Hell yeah.
This is like my favorite thing to do.
My last ever GameSpot video was going to New York and basically just looking at all of the places I could find from GTA 4.
Obviously, first time I ever went to America, my first night I went down there was like a.
It was like for a Call of Duty event and they had a big press party thing.
And I decided not to go to that and said go down to Venice Beach so I could check out um the, the skate area and all that stuff.
Um yeah god, i mean when the division, when um watchdogs three, which is the one that's in the bay area two sorry, There is no three.
No, there is.
I just I figured you would not be excited to go to London.
What was three again?
Oh, it was.
Oh, God, I totally forgot about that.
Yeah, I don't know.
The Getaway was a London one.
I remember that was pretty cool.
Watch Dogs 2 was like Lake Merritt in Oakland, which I lived beside at the time.
So that was kind of cool.
My apartment was almost in there.
What about you guys?
I love, I love doing this stuff.
Yeah, for sure.
It's like my favorite thing to do.
I'm going to be doing it for our, well, no, actually I better not say that.
If you're a patron, listen to this month's patron show and you'll find out about the unannounced doc that I will be doing this for uh later this year.
Uh, I only started doing more traveling recently.
So like getting to places for the first time wasn't something I I, I could like have a nostalgia for.
Um, But the only thing I could think of that made me feel that sort of way was it was sort of in reverse.
I have not been to California yet.
I'm sure when I do, I will see the Watch Dogs 2 locations and be like, I've been here before.
I took all the pictures.
But it's so stupid.
Call of Duty.
I can't remember which one.
It might be World War 3 or not World War 3.
Sorry.
Modern Warfare 3.
Yeah.
There's like a scene where you're on a bridge in Amsterdam.
Oh, funny.
Cool.
When we went to Amsterdam for our honeymoon, I was like, babe, hold on.
I know we're in one of the most beautiful, interesting places on Earth.
I just have to go take a picture at this bridge.
And I set up the shot and everything the way that that scene starts.
And I was like, this is weirdly cool.
It's like I've been here before, but I haven't.
So I have more of a reverse thing than going somewhere and having nostalgia for it after the fact.
Yeah, specifically for the japan video, i edited like three different montages of osaka and all the yakuza locations.
Akihabara keep like that's.
All i keep doing in japan is like every site is so specific.
But literally on this last trip i specifically went to osaka just because of yakuza and yeah, as soon as i was there it was like holy crap, like it was 10 000.
There were so many things like site, specifically in dotenbury.
And now it's like well, i want to go.
There's a sit, a tiny ass city uh, where shenmue takes place, that that whole the entire shenmue map is there.
Um, it would be insane to go to okinawa.
That's where yakuza 3 is.
Like there's so many more.
Yakuza 5 goes all around the country.
I want to go to fukuoka.
There's so many.
I want to go to hokkaido.
So there's more, more parts of japan.
I can't think of anything outside japan that i was.
Uh, me and my wife are finally watching the second season of the last of us and we were obviously up there for pax and i was telling her about when we were in pax.
I was like oh, this is in the, the game, this part's in the game, like all that sort of stuff.
Um, because obviously seattle is a big character in that game And yeah, a lot of that game is like straight up like oh, there's the convention center, you know like it's so, it's almost one to one, that little downtown area with all the crazy highways and stuff.
First time I visited San Francisco.
I had played Tony Hawk previously and was, you know, recognizing the wharf and stuff.
It's.
The layout is very me and my brother were just obsessed with being like.
This is a little different.
Like the bad were the letters.
Yeah, we couldn't find skate.
The Embarcadero is not doesn't take 20 minutes to skateboard up like it does in real life.
Yeah, exactly.
To get to the the sea lions.
Thanks, James.
And then Connor wrote in, games that introduce you to a genre.
This year I started playing Abiotic Factor, the survival crafting game set inside a very Black Mesa-esque facility.
Despite not normally being a survival crafting game fan, this game has quickly become one of my favorites of the year.
It has me looking at the genre more widely.
I also remember picking up XCOM Enemy Unknown back in 2012 and learning what I did.
In fact, that I like turn-based strategy games.
My question is what are some games that introduced you to a genre, specifically games that made you understand a genre that you didn't previously like in a way you hadn't before?
Hmm, i'm trying to look it up so i can find it.
I can't.
It's squeak cross.
Uh, i i love.
Is this pit cross?
Yes, i love puzzle games.
I had never gotten into pit cross.
I wanted to for a long time and i never playing those games, like they didn't have great tutorials to, to sort of onboard you slowly.
It was kind of like here's the mechanics go solve some puzzles.
Um, That one is the first one that made me get it, which is crazy, because it's weird.
It's like half an Animal Crossing game, where you play as a rat and you get to decorate your house with the stuff that you solve the puzzles from.
It's such a it's such a cool setup for the thing.
Like if you don't just like doing puzzles and you want something, a reward from that.
Does any come out like recently?
It came out like last month or two months ago.
You've been playing pit cross games longer than that was.
There was a demo okay, i want to say two next fests ago, so it would have been probably around when i started and yeah, i have been hopelessly addicted ever since that.
That game is a great introduction if you've ever wanted to play those those specific kinds of puzzles.
They're very fun.
I feel like this is half the thing that from was doing with their games, where they were like ah, some people don't like this weird shit.
Let's, let's make a Victorian gun.
One of these, or let's make a samurai, one of these.
And then people will go back and play a bunch of them.
Um, Yeah, I'm trying to think.
This is definitely.
I mean, I feel like XCOM is one that people bring up a lot where, like they didn't realize that they'd like turn-based stuff because so much of it is seems like it has a big barrier to entry on it.
I know Poker Night at the Inventory got me to understand the rules of poker, and then I like card games because of that.
So that helped.
I just needed the heavy alongside me.
I had played tactics RPGs before, but I definitely the ones that I liked were sort of the exception to the rule that I was like.
I like sort of strategy games and I like RPGs, but tactics RPGs is a mix of flavors that I don't necessarily love.
And I think into the breach was like weirdly revelatory for me.
Uh, not because it's a tactics RPG, but because the combat is.
Is such a distillation of the ideas in something like final fantasy tactics or tactics advanced or whatever, or over battle.
Um And yeah, it's just like an unbelievably tight and it just kind of opened my eyes to what that genre could be and maybe explore more of that genre and see that that was something I liked.
And I don't know.
I thought it was always like it's like oh, that's like, why would I want to fight someone if it was like a puzzle?
That sounds fucking boring.
You know?
It's so funny how, like, we have similar tastes and stuff, except for puzzles.
You're like, get that shit away from me.
I love puzzles.
Get puzzles out of my fucking survival horror game.
I'm not doing math, motherfucker.
I want to get scared.
You have to be seduced into puzzles.
Puzzle games.
A puzzle game is like someone walking up to you and being like hey, you want to go make out.
I'm like, Jesus, that's a little forward.
A game that has puzzles is like – You're not a whore enough for puzzles.
That's the process.
The puzzle slut in me wants the puzzles.
But I need to have a little decorum.
Puzzle slut is my favorite subgenre.
Oh, no.
Puzzles.
Man, that's going to be in the FMV game.
That'll be the next one.
Oh, you're right, actually.
That's definitely – it's probably the name of the game already.
Yeah.
The other genre that I got into because of a game that perhaps doesn't line up with the successful ones, Haddleful Boyfriend was the first visual novel I ever played that got me to actually play.
A man's brother.
Am I preaching to the choir?
I didn't realize that you were such a pigeon lover.
I have.
Look, Dr Shu and me go way back.
Me and me and ryota are are good friends.
I have played all of how to for boyfriend.
I've played all of holiday star.
It was oh yeah, i still have to play that.
One holiday star is pretty fucked up.
Holiday star how to for boyfriend gets weird.
This, of course, for people do not who do not know is the pigeon dating um game, and that came out a long time ago.
I streamed this at game spot back when i was in the uk, so this is like This is 2011 or something.
Um, uh, holiday star just starts at a hundred.
Just like, it's like workup.
Yeah.
Cause it's kind of like four mini stories.
Um, yeah, I have a doctor shoe plushy somewhere.
Oh, that's so sick.
Yeah, I'm a big... My daughter knows who Dr. Shu is.
Oh my God, you're keeping the legacy alive.
Oh, hat off a boyfriend.
Me and I'm a big hat off a boyfriend.
Apparently, you can go to the at least you could back then the pigeon cafe that this game was based on.
Yeah exactly, they let you make out with these pigeons that you're dating that are like yeah, there is a pit, there is a pigeon in this game, dr shoe, who is basically the eric cartman of that game, just an absolute psychopath who is going to destroy everything.
It's uh yeah, it's good stuff.
That's what got me into those hentai games, I guess.
Sometimes, you know, the weirdest things start you off in your kinks.
It's all good.
Exactly.
I went from pigeon to human.
That's the two empress.
Now it turns out.
All right, here we go.
We got another email here, Frank.
Yeah, then Peter wrote in and asked about Steam refunds and morality.
I use Steam's refund policy like an ice cream sample.
Sometimes I try a game blindly and it becomes a lifetime favorite, like Arctic Eggs.
Other times I know within 10 minutes I'll never touch it again.
My friend believes that refunding a game is immoral unless the game is broken or falsely advertised and is especially concerned for the plight of indie devs.
Short of refunding a game.
That's very brief.
What are your thoughts on the morality of Steam refunding?
I mean, I don't know.
It's there.
I've never heard of somebody using it in this way.
I guess it makes complete sense to use it almost like a demo.
That's what I do.
Yeah, to jump in.
I don't have a problem with it.
If you're taking advantage of people...
I don't think anyone who wants... I don't know.
People want to make money, but I don't think anyone wants to trick somebody into taking their money.
So I don't really feel like you have anything to feel guilty about.
If the process of doing this is what's leading you to buying more indie games, ultimately, then... it comes out in the wash you know what i mean like it's it's a you're you're you're doing it the right way i i feel that way too where i feel like if i played a game for i've refunded very few games i think it's only ever if i then realized it was on game pass and i already owned it or that it was on it like i i yeah like i think i got recently there was one that was on playstation i actually wanted to play it on playstation so i refunded after playing 30 minutes um so i tend not to do that but i hadn't i hadn't ever thought about doing it in a in that way for what it's worth steam pays out like 30 days later um and this is a lot of this is because of the refund thing so it's not like you're taking money out of the developer's pocket they're just not getting the money is from what i understand is the way that that sort of works um So yeah, I don't see a... I think you know yourself if you're doing something.
You know, morality is like people know, right?
If they're doing something shitty, you know if you're doing something shitty.
We're not going to judge you.
You can do whatever you want.
I'll judge them if they're doing something shitty.
Oh, sure.
But in this circumstance?
This is fine.
When you return it, they give you the little note space.
If it's like a game that you've thought was cool but it wasn't for you, leave them alone, like don't just say like because they, because it gives you the drop down, you gotta pick, like it's not fun and then you just return it.
It's like you seem like a dick, but like i know developers read those, so like, just put in, like hey, like I want to try this out.
It's clearly, you're clearly incredibly talented.
I just, maybe this is not the flavor that I enjoy.
I wish you the best of luck.
I love you.
I realized I needed $30 for food this week, so I decided against this.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, leave him a little note.
Yeah, nice.
There you go.
Podcast.noclip.video.
And that's the podcast this week, folks.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Make sure to check out our... Two of our three Machine Games documentaries are now live.
Apparently YouTube is having some viewing problems.
People were thinking... There's a lot of scuttlebutt about it this week.
There's a recent one from Linus Tech Tips suggesting that perhaps...
YouTube has just figured out a way of getting rid of idle viewers or something maybe, or because apparently likes and everything and ad rev on people's videos, even though the view counts are down, are the same.
So there's there's lots of confusion.
Some people think it's because of the the restricted modes thing. age verification stuff.
I'm not, I don't know what it is.
I'm, I'm, I'm just doing research.
I'm doing my own research, um, trying to figure out what, what's going on.
But um Hey, if you haven't watched our machine games documentary or our documentary on Wolfenstein, um then go check those out.
We have a 90 minute doc or something like that.
Doc on Indiana Jones and the great circle coming out in the next couple of weeks as well.
And then we're going to be in Disco Times for the next little foreseeable future after that with our Disco Elysium stuff.
I also wanted to mention that our friends over at Archipel are kickstarting a Yoko Taro book.
They've interviewed Yoko Taro a couple of times.
There is a book on Kickstarter called The Worlds of Yoko Taro, with the L in worlds in square brackets.
Um, it looks like it should meet its goal.
It's got 352 backers.
Um, it's got 16,000 of 33,000.
I think uh Archipel are a fantastic group of video producers in Japan that record really outstanding documentaries.
Um, not just about game developers, but also about uh artists, uh predominantly, I feel like, in the field of sort of um And manga, anime as well, and games as well.
I believe they are both French, I think.
I forgot.
I've only talked to him a couple of times over the years.
We sort of are quite simpatico because Archipel and Noclip are very similar in the things that we find are important and the work that we like to do.
Uh, their work is really gorgeously shot and curated and um they, they do great work.
A lot of their videos are shorter than the type of stuff we do, but they're incredibly well produced.
Um so yeah, if you're a fan of Yoko Taro, you're a fan of Archipel.
I wanted to mention it.
Um that uh, you can pick it up.
It looks fairly reasonable.
You can get like a digital version for $21 or the physical version for 34.
It says here, um, Uh, 5,000 yen and that's, that's all they're doing.
They're not doing a million and one different versions of this, um.
So yeah, if you uh support game documentary makers or game history, or you're a big fan of uh yoko tara's work, then uh head over to that.
Uh jesse, if you don't mind sticking a link in the description, that'll be awesome.
Got it.
I already have it open here.
It sounds awesome.
It looks cool, doesn't it?
Yeah, and just archipelago, like they have such a great eye that i'm like oh, this book is gonna look great, like it's gonna.
Gorgeous photographs and and And Grace interviews in it.
So can't wait to see the art.
And also, if you go on the Kickstarter page, you can scroll down and see a picture of Yoko Taro sitting in a bathtub staring at a picture of I don't know who, but perhaps a Japanese actress with the with the head on, I'm guessing.
Of course.
I mean, yeah.
Who showers without their mask on?
You're right.
Excerpt from our 2017 video portrait.
Yeah, there you go.
Like they have they've already. uh interviewed uh yoko tara in the past as well i know so this is cool though this is you know i've always wanted to figure out the whole book thing like i think it'd be cool to put out a book a no-clip book you know books are confusing what do you understand words what's this whole book thing yeah i don't get it trees the buttons yeah i want to do like a tent where the buttons oh that's true we should do like a like a like a 10th anniversary book.
That's like playable.
You should do one of those Chinese visual novels.
Yes.
It's just you.
We'll shoot.
We'll do the like really.
That's you say that, but that's the type of thing that's going to get me to make a game.
If we can, I'm friends with models in Japan.
I know.
Yeah.
I'm not kidding.
Look, I don't need you.
I'm Irish.
Peach Milky's Irish.
We've already got the common ground.
That's all you need.
So I know if we were secretly not secretly, but in the back of my head.
You know, there's always like people who are like oh, we can call on them if we need something.
Peach Milky's always been there.
Peach milky can can, can do the job.
So i'm like that, you're right.
But also, if there's like an engine, there's got to be an engine for these, but maybe not for video.
Video is really tricky.
Video playback in video, in video games, is weirdly tricky, you know, it's why, like people do, like bink video and stuff they like get middleware to do this stuff.
I think it has.
I think it's because of like frame rates and run cycles and stuff like that that it can be awkward or whatever.
Um, but uh yeah, i want to.
I want to do that.
Could we find an engine?
I'll do it in unity, i'll just, i'll get it.
Yeah, i don't think any engine doesn't have a video playback thing.
Godot has it.
I'm just a fucking luddite over here.
I'm just trying to do it in c sharp and it's not working.
It's not working.
Yeah okay, maybe we should do that.
We should make a little noclip game.
We should make it like no clips christmas adventure and it's only like a one hour game.
But that'd be very funny.
What good thing.
You know a guy who could do that.
It's a secret ending where i'm just riding the goat around or something.
That'd be good.
Just what do you mean?
Who do i know that could do that?
Jeremy, who could make a video game?
Yeah jeremy jane, our good friend, i could do that.
I got one in the works.
As long as there's no... I can't do two games with netcode at the same time.
But as long as it's a single player... Multiplayer FMV game?
Is that what you're asking for?
That would be sick, actually.
If you're competing for the affections of the same Chinese woman.
Princess.
What would a multiplayer FMV game look like?
You would have to play it.
Or maybe it uses your webcam.
I actually i had you're getting projected into the other person.
I was literally just saying the exact same thing.
There is a thing in unity that lets you uh, read a webcam and put, oh really yeah yeah, put that on like the.
You would just have like um, like an untextured sphere on as like the head.
It would just be your face.
That could be our like psycho mantis moment.
You know what i mean.
Where like, suddenly you're in the game, like your webcam turns on, you're like shit.
That is a funny thing is like ask, i've always thought about if you how you would sort of like trojan horse, that because you, you would need to introduce the idea that there needed to be a webcam on and plugged in.
But then, as soon as you heard that, you'd be like oh, there's like a webcam thing.
That happens.
You know yeah, but what if so?
Here's the way you do it.
At the start, you signal the like webcam thing like oh, we're going to use your webcam and then never use it because they're just going to be freaked out the whole fucking time after being watched.
That's right.
Or you do just count how many times they blinked throughout the entire play.
Just make, or you make a light turn on.
You know what i mean.
You don't use it in anything.
That's fucked up.
You just you just make the light on the fucking webcam turn on and it's just like.
It's like it's being the code is just like initiating the webcam, but it's not actually going anywhere.
It's just like That'd be good.
That would scare the shit out of me.
Really, like, freak people out.
If my webcam turned on while I was playing a game, that would scare the fuck out of me.
That would be so good.
In a real visceral way that I wouldn't like, but that'd be cool.
Or at a certain point, just to freak people out, you just play the Windows shutdown music.
Like, turn the screen off.
All right, Daniel Mullins.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm just, exactly.
I'll delete one of your files.
Yeah fuck, we need to make an fmv game now.
Yeah, let's do it.
It should be an fmv game about interviewing developers and we should go.
That's great, dude.
I was thinking of making a game like that.
Yeah, I started making the interface and everything.
I was like, this is a cool.
That's why I have the green screen is because I was like filming fake developer stuff.
Then halfway through, I was like the guy who worked for no clip can't do that.
It's like he's talking shit.
No, that's great.
It's about starting a no clip like YouTube channel.
And it's like, like a dating simulator.
It starts like a, like low level.
And then you're like working your way up, you know to the uh, what if?
Shiori fujisaki, what's her name?
From tokimeki frank shiori fujisaki, is that right?
Oh yeah shiori, thank you.
What if?
What if it's you sitting down to interview like hugo martin or somebody?
But like it's like the intrusive thoughts.
You have to fight the intrusive thoughts.
So, like the three questions you can ask are like how did you guys figure out the design of the weapons in Doom, the Dark Age, like the shield?
Or, you know, what's it like working on a third game in the series?
Or fuck you.
You know, you just like.
You just have to constantly avoid the intrusive thought, and that's what's going through your head when you're doing it.
You're just like i just i really want to say fuck you.
So bad.
The buttons are moving around the screen too, so you're like trying to trying to click on the right one.
Or are you just trying desperately to remember the last question because this is your fourth interview of the day and your brain has turned to mush?
I think we have it, Jeremy.
I think we have it, Jeremy.
I think we have it, Jeremy.
I've been taking notes.
I think we got most of those.
I'll just ask fucking some AI to do the rest.
Sorry for dropping a C-bomb on.
I hope your children weren't listening, everyone.
But that's art, you know?
Sometimes it just comes at you.
Amen.
Amen.
Noclip2, folks.
YouTube.com slash at Noclip2.
Patreon.com slash Noclip2 if you want to be part of this weird new project endeavor on our part.
It's been a long time coming.
Thank you so much for supporting this podcast, funding our docs, and everything else.
We really appreciate it.
And we'll be back next week. with more video games.
Bye!
